Feat Request (Qt/GUI): Tor status indicator icon in bottom right

kristovatlas commented at 4:42 pm on March 22, 2016: none

The current QT GUI shows some network status indicators in the bottom right.

I’d like someone to add one for Tor. It might be the Tor onion logo that is either green, yellow (if going through some not-quite-ready stage) or with a circle and line striking through it when not connected via Tor.

This would complement the Tor-related improvements in 0.12.0 and make it easier for users to determine whether they are connected via Tor without doing additional investigatory steps, such as using the -debug=tor switch.

kristovatlas commented at 4:44 pm on March 22, 2016: none

Side note: OBPP currently has two criteria relevant to this https://github.com/OpenBitcoinPrivacyProject/wallet-ratings/blob/master/report-02/criteria.md

Client provides a visual indication if the balance information is not being obtained through an anonymizing network, including IP address information (2.142%) Client provides a visual indication if outgoing transactions are not being routed through an anonymizing network, including IP address information (1.713%)

jonasschnelli added the label Feature on Mar 22, 2016

jonasschnelli added the label GUI on Mar 22, 2016

laanwj commented at 7:52 am on March 23, 2016: member

Makes sense. I think in general we need a proxy indicator. Having a specific Tor icon as a special case would be nice, of course. See also #763 (“Warning if unable to connect to proxy”)

kristovatlas commented at 6:14 pm on March 24, 2016: none

If there is conceptual support but no one else eager to implement, I might take a stab at this.

jonasschnelli commented at 7:02 pm on March 24, 2016: contributor

@kristovatlas Concept ACK. I’m ready to support, review and test a PR.

gmaxwell commented at 7:52 pm on March 24, 2016: contributor

A fine thing to do– and super useful for transactions, BUT–

Side note: OBPP currently has two criteria relevant to this https://github.com/OpenBitcoinPrivacyProject/wallet-ratings/blob/master/report-02/criteria.md Client provides a visual indication if the balance information is not being obtained through an anonymizing network, including IP address information (2.142%)

Bitcoin Core never contacts a third party for balance information.

kristovatlas commented at 8:22 pm on March 24, 2016: none

@gmaxwell: ah, completely true. there may be some benefits to putting all traffic through Tor, though.

sipa commented at 8:25 pm on March 24, 2016: member

Concept ACK

laanwj added the label Privacy on Mar 31, 2016

jonasschnelli added the label Easy to implement on Jun 21, 2016

MarcoFalke commented at 8:11 pm on August 19, 2016: member

Implementation could be done similar to #8517

Leviathn commented at 1:29 pm on September 5, 2017: none

Concept ACK - would be very useful for GUI users..

drbsci commented at 9:32 pm on October 28, 2017: none

Hi. I’m trying this as a first issue. I’m thinking of using just the Tor onion for disconnected, the whole Tor symbol with the onion in the middle for connected and the Tor symbol with purple -> yellow for connecting (attached). tor2

.

I was hoping I could make this change mostly within Qt Creator, but the bitcoin-qt.pro file in contrib somehow wasn’t able to find main in bitcoin/src/qt. Possibly adding the Tor symbols should be done within the qt source code? Anyway, I’m stuck and wondering whether you could point me in the right direction without too much difficulty. I’ve read something about signals and slots. Presume the state of Tor (connected, etc.) is the signal and the image display is the slot, and I’d use the “connect” syntax to link them. As you can see, I’m very new to Qt. Please let me know whether this still looks like a good first issue for me.

jonasschnelli commented at 5:11 pm on October 31, 2017: contributor

The main point I’m worried about the “Is-tor-enabled” icon is, if we can signal that reliable from our layer. Just checking if a proxy is active in 127.0.0.1:9050 seems not enough,… A positive-false signalling here could have wide consequences.

lmlsna commented at 4:40 am on December 7, 2017: contributor

A possible kludgey check if tor is up and running is to just send a dummy HTTP request directly to the tor socks proxy port. If tor is running, it will politely respond with a HTTP/1.0 501 Tor is not an HTTP Proxy, if it isn’t, it won’t.

This misses the possibility that the tor client is running but unable to connect, however that would result in a broken connection (as opposed to an accidental clearnet connection). However, I can’t think of any way to verify tor is actually working other than either asking tor-arm (which might not be there) or requesting https://check.torproject.org/ through the proxy (like the TBB does).

jonasschnelli referenced this in commit 40c34a0a29 on May 16, 2018

fanquake commented at 10:12 am on August 14, 2020: member

Moved this over to the GUI repo: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gui/issues/58.

fanquake closed this on Aug 14, 2020

fanquake removed the label Privacy on Aug 14, 2020

fanquake removed the label good first issue on Aug 14, 2020

fanquake added the label Privacy on Aug 14, 2020

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Feat Request (Qt/GUI): Tor status indicator icon in bottom right #7734